Week 2

A) If I walk over to the table and sit in a chair, the seat will be there to catch my bottom. If the chair is not actually there, I will fall to the ground.

B) If I walk over to the table and sit in a chair, the seat may catch my bottom, but how do I know that something is actually supporting me? I think I am sitting in the chair, but who is to say that something is just making me think my weight is being supported by an object?

Which statement makes more sense? 

Obviously, to Rene Descartes it would be statement "B". Methodological Skepticism bathes all ideas in doubt, until it can raise the idea back up with absolute certainties. Nothing except our own existence is safe from this shower of disbelief. For example: "I think I am sitting in a chair, because I am not on the ground. However, I may be dreaming and actually be lying down in my bed." How in the world are we supposed to apply this form of philosophy to any sort of normal activity? 

Most people, myself included, would say that statement "A" makes more sense. We, as a current people, tend to believe something, anything actually, until we are given some reason not to believe it. No one uses skepticism on a regular basis. For example: If a friend tells you "I am going home to work on my homework," you would have no reason to doubt that claim unless you read on Facebook that your friend was going to the movie theater just five minutes after that conversation. 

Methodological Skepticism is a radical idea, but it really cannot be used in our daily life. Sure, anyone can sit down and reduce all of their beliefs to doubts, but it simply does not make sense to use this as an everyday strategy. This does not mean, however, that this form of skepticism has not shaped philosophy/epistemology over the past 400+ years.

SIDE NOTE: Descartes three stages of doubt led him to believe that the only thing we can truly be certain of is our own existence. "I think; therefore, I am." To what level can we actually be certain of our existence? To be honest, a lot of Descartes writings sound like the junior high school journal of a mad man. So I am going to go out on an equally as insane limb. The fourth stage of doubt: the imagination. How do we know we exist? We could simply be a figment of someone else's imagination. A background to another person's dream. Would there be any way for us to know if we were just a molecular spark in the back of someone's mind? Anyway...just a thought. (no pun intended)